Mesmerizing Video Shows 24 Hours Of Flight Paths Over Europe

What does a full day of flight paths over Europe look like? Sort
of like an immense rave on the cloud tops, according to this
trippy visualization that might have you reaching for glow sticks
and PLURRing in no time.

The short animation depicts 24 hours of flight data extracted
from one period in July, 2013. Planes launch over the Atlantic
from North America like rockets spewing blue fire; they
eventually join a scrambling hive of activity swirling over
Europe's various airports. Glowing nodules depict especially
active hubs near London – like Heathrow, the busiest international airport on the
Continent, and Gatwick, said to be the most efficient single-runway airport in
existence.

Just how many flights are typically whizzing over Europe?
Including business aviation and all-cargo journeys, it's about
26,000 flights a day by 2010 calculations, according
to EUROCONTROL. In the U.K., a big chunk of this
volume is handled by the air traffic-control company NATS, which
made this visualization. The workers at NATS typically handle
more than 6,000 flights a day. If you're wondering what that
entails, here's a description:

UK airspace contains a network of corridors, or airways. These
are usually ten miles wide and reach up to a height of 24,000
feet from a base of between 5,000 and 7,000 feet. They mainly
link busy areas of airspace known as terminal control areas,
which are normally above major airports. At a lower level,
control zones are established around each airport. The area
above 24,500 feet is known as upper airspace. All of these
airways are designated "controlled airspace".

Aircraft fly in them under the supervision of air traffic
controllers and pilots are required to file a flight plan for
each journey, containing details such as destination, route,
timing and height.